Pressure Point Patterns: Tennis Strategy at the French Open

Brody Pinto




Abstract

  • At the highest level of tennis, mental skill is often as — if not more — important than physical or technical ability.

  • This project explores how top players handle pressure situations to gain an edge over opponents.

  • Shot-by-shot data — including precise ball coordinates — from the French Open (the most prestigious clay court tournament) was used.

  • The analysis required: extensive data cleaning, parsing of match scores, joining multiple data sources

  • These steps enabled the creation of visualizations showing how elite players serve and return during high-pressure points.

  • Key findings:

    • On serve, elite players tend to stick to their strengths and play more aggressively under pressure.

    • On return, elite players generally adopt a more conservative strategy.

Data

TODO: Fill in - data transformation


Summary Stats

TODO: Fill in - number of total matches, number of total points played, number of important points played


Case 1 - Rafael Nadal Serve Locations

TODO: Fill in plot here (Nadal 2022 serves colored by break point)


Case 2 - Iga Swiatek Serve Locations

TODO: Fill in plot here (Swiatek 2023 serves colored by importance)


Case 3 - Novak Djokovic Return Locations

TODO: Fill in plot here (Djokovic 2021 returns colored by importance)


Conclusion

  • Southern counties tend to be more food insecure while north central and northeastern counties tend to be less food insecure.

  • We fit a simple spatial model and observed that it did not significantly alter p-values or coefficients.

  • Future analysis is important because the spatial relationship of food insecurity is visible in the residuals plot.

References